A need presently exists for building owners and building tenants to be able to control more efficiently, both in terms of costs and conservation, their consumption of resources, such as gas, electricity, steam, and chilled water. This need is underscored by the recent wave of resource deregulation that is taking place in the marketplace, and as seen in such places as California. The resource deregulation trend is expected to continue to grow and spread to other states throughout North America. Currently both building owners and/or building management, building tenants, and resource service providers have only a patch work of information they can rely on in reviewing resource consumption. Resource consumption information currently available to building owners and building tenants fails to allow either group to effectively, both in terms of costs and conservation, control their resource consumption for two reasons: the lack of a central repository for the various types of information that relate to resource consumption and the lack of real time reporting on resource consumption and resource delivery and utilization structures.
The information available to building owners/managers and building tenants is not available in real time and typically comes in the form of aggregate billing data. Thus, the information does not permit detailed reporting, such as peak usage and/or load components that make up the billing, such as for example, by metering device or resource utilization structure. To further complicate matters, information regarding resource consumption for a particular building or tenant typically comes from several disparate sources. For example, the building owner/manager typically receives an aggregate utility bill for the entire building from a resource service provider. This aggregate bill is then divided among the building's several tenants by the building owner/manager in a variety of ways. In some instances, each tenant has its own meter or meters which track the resource usage of the tenant. These meters, commonly called sub-meters because they are subordinate to a building's main meters, have to be read and maintained. The reading and maintaining of the sub-meters is typically done by private contractors and/or consultants.
In situations where there are no sub-meters, a study of the physical space occupied by each tenant of the building must be conducted. Contractors and/or consultants, typically independent from the contractors and/or consultants that read and maintain sub-meters, come on site to the building and arrive at an estimate, through field studies and surveys, as to a tenant's resource usage based on, for example, the square feet of a tenant's space and the number and types of equipment attached to the resource delivery structures of the building, such as risers and switches. This practice of estimating tenant resource usage is known as electric rent inclusion and requires specialized skills and knowledge to implement effectively. Both sub-metering and rent inclusion methods of resource billing require that contractors and/or consultants have knowledge of the specific details governing such billing, as set forth in a rental or lease agreement in effect between a tenant and the building owner/manager. Additionally, resource consumption for the common areas of a building, such as a lobby, also requires the use of a contractor and/or consultant, with specialized knowledge, to come on site and conduct field studies in order to provide the owner/manager of the building with resource expenses associated with such commons areas. The resource expenses are then typically passed onto the building tenants according to their lease terms.
Each of the above identified contractors and/or consultants typically operate independently from the other contractors and/or consultants, which means that the resource consumption information for the building is not centralized. Due to the fragmented nature of the information available to both building owners/managers and building tenants it is very difficult for either group (tenant or owner/manager) to manage resource demand and to define an efficient resource management program.
Moreover, if a building owner/manager or building tenant wants to remodel particular floors or office space within a building the architectural designs for the modeling project must comport with the resource delivery structures of the building.
This requires an intimate knowledge of the resource capabilities of the building, such as, for example, knowledge of a building's power risers and utility closets. This information is typically provided by an independent contractor that maintains the resource delivery structures of the building. However, each resource delivery system and/or set of systems, such as electrical power, is generally maintained by different sets of contractors. For example, the contractors that maintain a building's electrical system are typically different than the contractors that maintain a building's plumbing system.
There exists a need to be able to aggregate and access, in real time, though a single platform or system, a building's resource delivery and utilization structures and the information associated with these structures, and to use this information to monitor, manage and control the resource delivery and utilization structures and the resource consumption states of a building, buildings or other structure. Deregulation of the nation's resource providers further underscores this need. As deregulation continues to spread throughout North America, tariffs on electricity are likely to result wherein resource rates will vary hour to hour based on demand. Providing the ability to monitor and control resource consumption for a building or other structure in real time will allow building tenants and building owners/managers to manage their resource expenditures and their resource conservation efforts more efficiently. Further, centralized access to a building's resource delivery and utilization structures will allow more efficient, both in terms of costs and conservation, maintenance and usage of these structures.